It remains for us, aided by the illustrations of our plates, to bring into bolder relief, by means of concrete examples, the internal and formal cha racteristics of the periods of which we have spoken.
Training of were brought up exclusively under the supervision of the mother and instructed in her occupations, or at best were sent to a convent to be educated. The boys of the upper classes were sent to other noble houses, or to the petty or larger courts, to be trained in the arts of chivalry. The youth first served his master as a page, and learned in the stables the care of horses, and in the courtyard of the castle the art of riding and the use of arms. Intellectual training did not become general previous to the sixteenth century. In time the novice became an esquire, in token of which lie received a sword. Then it became his duty to accompany his knight or prince to the chase, to tournaments, and to war. Fidelity and devotion to his chief constituted his first duty on every occasion; he carried his weapons to the battlefield: did it happen to him to protect his master by sword or shield, or perhaps even to save his life, he earned the greatest glory.
fulfilled the term of his apprenticeship (which usually terminated with his twenty-first year), lie was knighted, generally on the occasion of a battle or some special event. Religious consecration preceded the ceremony of knighting: the candidate was then clad in his coat of mail; his gloves and spurs were bestowed by a noble lady; kneel ing, he received three strokes with the flat of a naked sword from the hand of a knight or of a monarch; and lie then swore to perform faithfully all knightly duties, to defend persecuted virtue, and especially widows and orphans, and to use his sword in behalf of religion against the infidels. The knight who upon the completion of his apprenticeship did not pos sess means of support sought some new service; but if he had property he married and devoted himself to the administration of his estates. Knighthood was not necessarily the privilege of all nobles, or even of all princes; for example, Count William of Holland was not knighted until immediately before his coronation.
or the custom of knights who wandered from tour nament to tournament upholding the name and fame of some chosen mistress, was an institution of the Romance countries. It existed to a very slight degree in Germany, and only as a feeble imitation of foreign manners. Ulrich von Liechtenstein, who has left an autobiography in verse, seems in his devotion to the gentle sex to have been a real Ger man Don Quixote.
The mode of life of the nobles upon their own estates, or even at some royal court, was, as a general thing, frugal and simple. Even countesses and duchesses concerned themselves about the kitchen, the cellar, and the care of domestic animals. They even exercised the physician's art among the inmates and retainers of the castle. In later times they attended to the education of the children, and in the absence of their lord supplied his place in the general management of affairs. In Protest ant countries they even conducted public worship.
The lords themselves seem to have inherited the ancient Teutonic antipathy to routine labor, which they left to assistants while they them selves were employed in more congenial occupations. That they acquired renown by improving the breed of horses is often mentioned, more fre quently still their success in training dogs and falcons for the chase.
Hunting was the favorite pastime in times of peace; women even par ticipated in it down to the last century. Field and forest—the latter of which occupied far more territory than at present—supplied game of all kinds, often in hardly credible abundance. Wild-boars and deer abound ed, and bears and wolves were not unusual. In Prussia even bisons and elks were found. It is narrated that the landgrave Philip of Hesse and his companions slew over a thousand wild-boars and one hundred and fifty deer in a single hunt. Down to the seventeenth century the cross bow was the principal weapon of the chase; after that time guns, which were often finely carved and ornamented with inlaid work and gilding, were used. The javelin was used for 'hunting boars and bears (p1. 43, fig. ii).